Friday, February 20, 2009

"When the people relegated to doing good 'run' from doing good, the rest of us need to pick up the slack." Sandra HammelSee below *

"The United States has a moral obligation anytime you see humanitarian catastrophes..." Barack Obama................................................

................................................Barack Obama answers the Save Darfur Coalitionabout his plan to end the genocide in Darfur Posted on November 26, 2007 by savedarfurcoalition"...And when you see a genocide whether it's in Rwanda, or Bosnia or in Darfur - that's a stain on all of us, that's a stain on our souls...

I think the level of commitment and the way that I've spoken out on this issue indicates not only knowledge but also passion in bringing an end to this crisis.

It's very encouraging to see activism based not on self interest but on a moral imperative. And it's especially heartening to see the young people engaged in expressing their idealism through this movement.

We can't say 'never again' and then allow it to happen again. And as President of the United States, I don't intend to abandon people or turn a blind eye to slaughter."

A mother and her child crossing a river. They are among the thousands of displaced people seeking refuge in Dogdoré, Chad. Nicholas D. Kristof/The New York Times

"HERE IN A DARFUR REFUGEE CAMP"posted by Ann Curry February 18, 2009Source................................................

................................................Link to video at MSNBC1:32

SOMEWHERE IN CHAD -- Our NBC News team has landed in Africa and is again heading to the edge of Darfur, gearing up to report a pivotal moment in this tragedy.

Anytime now the International Criminal Court will announce whether to issue an arrest warrant for the President of Sudan for the atrocities in Darfur, a region of Sudan.

About six years after a war between the government of Sudan and a rebel group unleashed systematic rapes, mass killings, and the burning of hundreds of villages, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and millions are still waiting in camps in Sudan and Chad, waiting for hope and justice.

As our news team moves from planes to vans toward this world of desperation, I think of a woman named Myriam, who survived the burning of her village called Tamajour, just two days before we found her under a tree. Her 5-year-old daughter was traumatized and refusing to eat. When we took her back to her village to salvage what she could, it was still smoldering. The only life she had ever known was in ashes.

I think of Khamis, 13-year-old orphaned when his mother was killed and his father was lost in an attack. When we last saw him, he was a boy alone, surviving on his wits and the kindness of others in a refugee camp. Still he was able to be a good student in the camp's school.

I think of Aziza, raped as a virgin at 17, by an Arab wearing a Sudanese uniform. She said he first wanted to know what tribe she belonged to. He told her, "You are black. You have no place here. We will push you out of here. This land will remain for us." Then he grabbed her tightly and raped her, biting her arm and neck to mark her a victim of rape.

In the hospital, we found elderly Gida Zakaria, severely burned when her thatched roof was set on fire. White gauze was wrapped around her slender body. She told us her husband couldn't move fast enough and was burned to death.

I was going to begin this column with a 13-year-old Chadian boy crippled by a bullet in his left knee, but my hunch is that you might be more interested in hearing about another person on the river bank beside the boy: George Clooney.

Mr. Clooney flew in with me to the little town of Dogdoré, along the border with Darfur, Sudan, to see how the region is faring six years after the Darfur genocide began. Mr. Clooney figured that since cameras follow him everywhere, he might as well redirect some of that spotlight to people who need it more.

It didn’t work perfectly: No paparazzi showed up. But, hey, it has kept you reading at least this far into yet another hand-wringing column about Darfur, hasn’t it?

So I’ll tell you what. You read my columns about Darfur from this trip, and I’ll give you the scoop on every one of Mr. Clooney’s wild romances and motorcycle accidents in this remote nook of Africa. You’ll read it here way before The National Enquirer has it, but only if you wade through paragraphs of genocide.

The Darfur conflict has now lasted longer than World War II, but this year could be a turning point — provided that President Obama shows leadership and that the world backs up the International Criminal Court’s expected arrest warrant for Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

The stakes are evident in this little market town of Dogdoré, whose normal population of just a few thousand has swelled to 28,000 desperate, fearful people driven from smaller villages. They don’t think it’s safe here, but they find some reassurance in numbers — and leaving town isn’t an option, either, because flying out from the dirt airstrip is the only way to avoid rampant banditry on the roads.

Aid workers were pulled from Dogdoré in the fall because of violence in the area, leaving people on their own. Aid workers have just returned, but the entire town remains on edge.

One of the first persons we met was Qatri Ibrahim, a young woman who fled her village when the Sudanese janjaweed militia attacked and shot her 5-year-old and 8-year-old sons. “I’m afraid,” she said grimly. “But there are other people here, so I stay.”

Nicholas D. Kristof/The New York Times

Children at a refugee camp near the town of Goz Beida, Chad

In Darfur and eastern Chad, you can randomly approach any group of people and find heartbreaking stories. Mr. Clooney was clowning around with a group of boys bathing in the river — taking their photo and showing it to them digitally — and that’s when we met the 13-year-old boy with the bullet in his knee.

He’s Suleiman Ahsan, and he was wearing a pair of blue shorts — the only clothes he has. He also has a machete scar on his forehead; both it and the bullet date from a janjaweed attack on his village two years ago that killed his father.

Last year, Suleiman joined a militia and became a child soldier to avenge his father. “Recruiters come to the camps looking for boys like me to fight,” Suleiman told us. “Boys of 10 or 12 are old enough.”

Suleiman said that he learned to shoot but found the soldier’s life too grueling, so he deserted. Now he’s back to struggling to find food.

The International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for President Bashir — widely expected in the coming weeks — has the area particularly on edge, for fear that Mr. Bashir could retaliate by using a proxy force to invade Chad.

The fact that Sudan’s state-sponsored slaughter of civilians goes on, year after year, in and out of Darfur, is a monument to the fecklessness of the international community. A spasm of that same fecklessness intruded on this trip with Mr. Clooney, who is traveling unofficially but is a United Nations goodwill ambassador.

* Apparently concerned that Mr. Clooney might say something strongly critical of Mr. Bashir — perhaps come down hard on genocide? — the United Nations called me on Wednesday to say that effective immediately it was pulling Mr. Clooney’s security escort as he traveled these roads along the border. Now that did seem petty and mean-spirited. A Frenchman working for Save the Children was murdered on such roads last year, and the U.N. requires a military escort for its own vehicles here.

If the U.N. is too craven to protect its own goodwill ambassadors — because they might criticize genocide — it’s not surprising that it and the international community fail to protect hundreds of thousands of voiceless Darfuris.

Oh, and now for the juicy truth about all of Mr. Clooney’s wild romances and motorcycle accidents. Darn — out of space. Wait for my next column from this trip on Sunday ...

* I'm calling to ask President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton and Ambassador Rice to protect innocent civilians in Darfur in the wake of Bashir's arrest warrant. Please issue immediate warnings to Bashir and the government of Sudan specifying consequences of attacks on civilians. Please also prepare an emergency response plan to address further violence and appoint a full-time senior level envoy. Lastly, please stand firm in support of the ICC indictment and veto any delay in the prosecution of Bashir.

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About Me

I love my life. I love where I live. And I am passionate about my passions. I love to dance. Necessary to live: music, piano, singing, writing, acting, painting.
I have been fighting for and supporting the arts all my adult life. Since 2004, I have been working with other activists to end the Darfur genocide.
I have traveled to Europe many times since my early twenties. Places I have been: many USA states including Hawaii, Montreal, Canada, Barbados, France, Spain, Luxembourg, England, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Greece and Germany - and have wonderful memories.
My last trip was in May - June 2013 to Spain.
I would like to travel to Europe and Kyoto, Japan.
I love the southwest where I have visited Hopi, Navajo, Zia and San Idlefonso potters.
Life is exciting and I intend to live it full-out to the end.
B.S. and M.M., both in music

Genocide is not only a word,
it is crying of the whole human race.
There is nothing redeeming about being silent
when speaking up is the humane thing to do.
The honor and integrity of the human race is at stake.

"...And these for whom life has no repose, live at times in their rare moments of happiness with such strength and indescribable beauty, the spray of their moment's happiness is flung so high and dazzingly over the wide sea of suffering, that the light of it, spreading its radiance, touches others too with its enchantment..." Hemann Hesse STEPPENWOLF